Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review: A sick dual-screen laptop with life-changing productivity

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is a dual-display work of art. With the included folio stand, the laptop can be propped up in landscape mode to create the best portable workstation I’ve ever had. With such easy app-juggling, my productivity levels were out of this world. 

It’s like a two-monitor desktop setup you can carry in your hand. I often had Spotify and my Pomodoro timer open on the bottom half while I was working in Google Docs on the top half. And if I had articles to read, I’d flip the laptop to book mode.

There’s a virtual keyboard and trackpad you can use, too. But to keep your screens smudge free, the Yoga Book 9i ships with a detachable keyboard, a mouse, and a Gen-3 Digital Pen. With these surprisingly premium accessories, I didn’t miss the traditional laptop experience at all. 

The Yoga Book 9i’s mouse and pen
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

In fact, this was almost an elevated laptop experience for me. There are certainly a few things the Yoga Book 9i could stand to improve. It may not land on our best laptops page, but I’m loving this dual-display laptop era we’re in right now.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i price and specs 

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i isn’t cheap, but it’s surprisingly affordable for a dual-screen laptop. Our review unit costs $2,010 on Lenovo’s website and comes with the following specs: 

• Intel Core Ultra 7 155U CPU

• Integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics

• 16GB of RAM

• 1TB SSD

• Dual, 13-inch, 2880 x 1800-pixel, 60Hz OLED displays

• Rotating 360-degree Bowers & Wilkins soundbar 

For that price, you’ll also get a Lenovo Digital Pen (Gen 3), a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and a folio that fits the keyboard and acts as a stand for the Yoga Book 9i. If you want more RAM for smoother performance, you can spend an extra $57 to bump it up to 32GB.

What I like about the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

The Yoga Book 9i is full of amazing features, including its two beautiful OLED displays and an exceptional rotating Bowers & Wilkins soundbar.

Stunning high-res OLED displays

The Yoga Book 9i offers two attractive 2880 x 1800-pixel OLED panels with a 3:2 aspect ratio, providing more vertical real estate. The 13-inch display size might sound small on paper, but with two displays, there’s more than enough room to work.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

To test the display quality, I watched YouTube trailers for “Fall Guy” and “Arthur the King.” An impressive level of detail comes through, from the laugh lines around Ryan Gosling’s eyes to the individual strands of dog hair on Arthur. The colors are vibrant, too, whether you’re looking at lush landscapes, explosions, or bustling cities.

One notch below max brightness allowed me to see the displays perfectly while working outside on my patio — even when the sun was shining down on me in the middle of the day. With the display at almost max brightness, however, the battery drained pretty fast.

Dual-display efficiency is unmatched 

My desktop PC setup at home has two monitors, and having two monitors is one of the only things that I miss when I use my laptop to work from a coffee shop or a library. Sure, I could buy a portable monitor to solve this issue, but that’s just extra weight, setup, and money spent.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

Using Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i over the past few weeks has made me realize I want a laptop with two displays. It’s so easy to set everything up — and I often bring a wireless mechanical keyboard to type on anyway, so not having a built-in keyboard isn’t that big of a deal. 

Having two displays allows me to pull up Spotify and my Gmail on the bottom while working on Google Docs and other apps on top. Or, I can watch a YouTube video while writing if I need a little extra entertainment. So much room for activities! 

Plus, using the Yoga Book 9i in dual-display landscape mode puts the top screen at a more ergonomic height, which means I don’t need to bring along a laptop stand while working remotely.

Multiple modes to play with

Even though I defaulted to using the same mode — dual-display landscape mode propped up on the stand with the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse nearby — I really appreciate how many different modes there are to experiment with. 

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

Using the stand, you can prop up the laptop in book mode for two portrait displays. This mode was helpful for reading or writing lengthy articles. 

You can use the Yoga Book 9i like a traditional laptop, either by employing the virtual keyboard or by magnetically attaching the Bluetooth keyboard to the upper portion of the lower display

Or, fold one display slightly backwards to prop up the laptop in tent mode, perfect for watching movies. If you fold one display completely backwards, you can use the Yoga Book 9i as a tablet.

Amazing sound quality

Music aficionados: these are the laptop speakers for you. The Yoga Book 9i has a rotating Bowers & Wilkins soundbar that gave every song I listened to a full-body, atmospheric quality that I’ve never heard from laptop speakers before — not even from my own Yoga 9i’s Bowers & Wilkins soundbar.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

While listening to Bo Burnham’s “All Eyes on Me (The Outtakes Version),” the moody, low sounds layered in the song came through flawlessly and weren’t drowned out when he started singing. I also played Unprocessed’s “Real ft. Polyphia’s Tim Henson & Clay Gober,” and its nuanced lows, mids, and highs sounded well-balanced and crisp.

I found the volume sweet spot to be between 20 to 30 percent, but you can easily bump it up to max volume for room-filling sound that’s not distorted at all.

A thin, satisfying keyboard

I was shocked that I actually enjoyed typing on the detached Bluetooth keyboard that comes with the Yoga Book 9i. It’s an ultra-thin chiclet keyboard, and I never thought I’d be using the words “comfortable” and “intuitive” to describe it, but here we are.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

When comparing the typing experience between this portable keyboard and my daily driver laptop’s built-in keyboard, there’s no difference in productivity. All the keys are where I’d expect them to be and I never found myself needing to mash the Backspace key while working to correct errors. 

Gorgeous ‘Tidal Teal’ colorway

In a market full of silver, gray, and black laptops, it was incredibly refreshing to see the Yoga Book 9i’s beautiful Tidal Teal colorway.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

This deep teal adorns the Yoga Book 9i’s entire chassis, including the rotating soundbar, as well as the detachable Bluetooth keyboard, the Digital Pen, the Bluetooth Yoga mouse, and the protective folio.

What’s ‘eh’ about the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Some of the Yoga Book 9i’s features stood out to me immediately as fantastic or disappointing, but other features floated in the middle of each extreme. 

Middle-of-the-road performance

For a $2,000 laptop, I expected the Yoga Book 9i to deliver better performance.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

It’s equipped with one of Intel’s new chips — the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U — and yet, its Geekbench 6 score matched that of the HP Envy Move with an older Intel Core i5-1335U CPU. 

In practice, using the Yoga Book 9i felt relatively zippy, but there were quite a few stuttery moments sprinkled in. 

As I’m typing this in Google Docs, I have the following open: 40 Google Chrome tabs (which is using up absolutely all of my 16GB of RAM), the Spotify app that’s actively playing music, and the Clock app for tracking my time. 

I’ve been able to type smoothly without any interruptions, but if I need to open a new tab or drag a window to the other display, there’s definite lag. Most people might not have these many tabs open at once, but for a dual-display laptop that encourages multitasking, it seems like something the Yoga Book 9i should be able to handle flawlessly. 

When switching between landscape and book modes, it took longer than I’d like for my windows to figure out where they were supposed to be and snap into place. Plus, my Spotify and Clock apps wouldn’t be fully expanded for some reason, leaving an odd gap between the apps and my taskbar.

A passable virtual keyboard and trackpad

With eight fingers, you can bring up the Yoga Book 9i’s virtual keyboard and trackpad. It’s a fully equipped keyboard that looks just like the included physical keyboard — minus the Copilot button. 

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i’s virtual keyboard
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

This keyboard is great in a pinch if you forgot to bring along the physical keyboard or just need to type a few things, but it would never be my first choice. The haptic and visual feedback when typing is helpful, but my typical typing speed was slashed in half while using the virtual keyboard — and I made a lot more errors.

When using the virtual trackpad, the cursor can jump occasionally if you move your finger down too far and touch the virtual left- or right-click buttons. 

If you have the physical keyboard on the top half and the virtual touchpad on the bottom half, it’s also possible to lose the cursor behind the keyboard — however, this is an issue that can happen when using the Bluetooth mouse, too.

Regular cleaning is necessary

If you’re using the virtual keyboard and trackpad, you’ll constantly have to be cleaning fingerprint smudges off the display. These smudges can obviously be avoided by using the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, but the chassis is slightly fingerprint-attracting as well. 

Look at all the smudges on the Yoga Book 9i.
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

After only a few weeks of using the Yoga Book 9i, its beautiful Tidal Teal chassis has the same amount of fingerprints that my daily driver laptop accumulated over months.

Conveniently portable setup

There are a lot of components included with the purchase of a Yoga Book 9i, like a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, a Gen-3 Digital Pen, a folio, and of course, the laptop itself. 

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

At first, it seemed like a lot to keep up with, especially as someone who flits back and forth between home and remote locations throughout the workday. But in practice, it was easy to pack up all the components, and it was all relatively light. 

By itself, the Yoga Book 9i is just under 3 pounds. If you bring along all the other components, you’ll be adding about 4.1 pounds to your bag. 

It’d be great if everything was lighter, but it didn’t feel like much extra weight in my backpack compared to my daily driver laptop. That said, an included travel bag to keep everything together in your backpack would be a nice addition.

What I dislike about the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Clearly, there’s a lot I love about the Yoga Book 9i — but there were a few things that made me shake my head at this laptop. 

Where are all the ports?

The Yoga Book 9i is lacking in the ports department, offering only USB-C ports. Yes, it is a dual-display laptop, but the Asus Zenbook Duo proved that it’s possible to deck out a dual-display laptop with a plethora of helpful ports.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

On the left side, you’ll find one USB-C (Thunderbolt) port and a Lenovo Reset Recovery switch that can be triggered using a smartphone’s tiny SIM eject tool.

Flipping to the right side, there’s the power button, a webcam killswitch, and two USB-C (Thunderbolt) ports, one of which has AOU BC 1.2 support for faster mobile charging.

Short battery life (and a short charging cable to boot)

I didn’t expect a laptop with two 2880 x 1800-pixel OLED displays to last an incredibly long time, but I really hoped it would at least last a full workday with its new “more efficient” Intel chip. 

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

To make matters worse, it has a short charging cable, just like Lenovo’s Slim 7 14 I recently tested. The only slight saving grace here is that the Yoga Book 9i has a USB-C port on both sides for more convenient charging.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i Geekbench 6 score

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9 earned a multi-core score of 8,642 on the Geekbench 6 performance benchmark. This isn’t a terrible score, but it’s not great either.

Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

For comparison, the Asus Zenbook Duo — another dual-screen laptop — earned a multi-core score of 10,344. Granted, the Zenbook Duo is equipped with a slightly more powerful Meteor Lake chip, but it also costs less than the Yoga Book 9.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i battery life 

To test the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i’s battery life, we looped Tears of Steel in 1080p at 50% brightness until it died. It lasted a mere 7 hours and 5 minutes with the virtual keyboard and trackpad pulled up, so if you’re actively using both displays, expect the battery life to be even less.

The Asus Zenbook Duo — which has a slightly more powerful processor and two lower-res OLED displays — lasted 8 hours and 42 minutes with the PCMark10 battery benchmark.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i webcam and microphone

In a world full of blurry laptop webcams, the Yoga Book 9i’s 5MP webcam is a breath of fresh air. Colors rendered accurately, from my flushed cheeks to my green eyes and dark blue jacket — and I could spot individual strands of hair, fairly crisp lines around my face, and unfortunately, the blemishes on my chin. 

Can you believe this photo was taken on a webcam?!
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

The microphone is also higher quality than what you’ll find on most laptops. I hopped on a call with a friend to test the microphone quality of the Yoga Book 9i, my daily driver Yoga 9i, and my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra — and the Yoga Book 9i came out on top as the clear winner.

Is the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i worth it?

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is absolutely worth it. It’s a relatively pricey $2,000 laptop, but for that price, you’ll get two gorgeous OLED displays, exceptional sound quality, and a slew of premium accessories that turn this laptop into a workstation. 

And as long as you’re near an outlet, you won’t have to worry about the Yoga Book 9i’s short battery life.

If stronger performance, a better battery life, or port availability are more important to you than high-res displays, premium sound, and workstation accessories, the Asus Zenbook Duo might be more up your alley.